‘Uzi Killer’ Case Divides Candidates in Race for D.A.

When Steve Cooley, who wants to be Los Angeles County’s next district attorney, cranks into high gear on the campaign trail, he is almost certain to bring up “the Uzi killer of Calabasas.”

The phrase has a nice, alliterative ring to it, which Cooley uses to full effect: “the OOOZY KILLer of KAL-uh-BASS-us.” It refers to an especially chilling murder case that, Cooley says, typifies the failure of his opponent, incumbent Gil Garcetti, to turn his rhetorical support for gun control into action.

But did Garcetti go easy on the so-called Uzi killer, Robert Rosenkrantz, as Cooley claims? Or did he merely support the decision of a deputy who, Garcetti now says, made a mistake by not opposing Rosenkrantz’s bid for parole?

What is most interesting about the Rosenkrantz case is what it says about the race for district attorney. There is a broad gulf of mutual mistrust separating the two candidates, and a willingness on both sides to shoot first and ask questions later.

Cooley, a top deputy district attorney, has used the case to combat Garcetti’s dogged insistence that the challenger is soft on gun control. In fact, their positions on gun control are nearly identical.

The challenger also has suggested that it is symptomatic of Garcetti’s lax ethics and alleged willingness to kowtow to the rich and powerful. But the record suggests that, in this case at least, Garcetti is guilty of no more than inattention to the appearance of impropriety, if that.

The truth about the Rosenkrantz case has been an elusive element in the bitter campaign. The two candidates have diametrically opposed views of what happened in the highly politicized case, which itself has led to an extraordinary showdown between Gov. Gray Davis and the state Court of Appeal.

Here’s Cooley, responding to the incumbent’s proposal to confiscate all assault weapons: “When [Garcetti] says, ‘Let’s get these guns off the streets,’ well, let’s start by being a real prosecutor and not urging parole for the Uzi killer of Calabasas, who shot someone 10 times in the head with an Uzi machine gun. He has supported the parole of this young man. Why? Why the early parole for someone who used a machine gun to kill another young man?”

And here’s Garcetti: “Mr. Cooley is not dealing with all the facts. It is without a question, it’s been documented, it’s been proved . . . that that decision [regarding parole] was not made by me, it was not made by anyone on my staff at the executive level. It was made by the prosecutor who has the responsibility for attending every lifer hearing, Diane Vezzani.”

A review of the available records in the case, along with interviews with most of the central figures in the dispute, suggests that Garcetti is correct. But it also provides fuel for those who say the case has been mismanaged by his department.

On June 28, 1985, Rosenkrantz fired 10 rounds from his newly acquired Uzi semiautomatic carbine at an acquaintance, Steven Redman, who had “outed” him as gay a week before. Rosenkrantz was 18 at the time. The 17-year-old Redman had caught Rosenkrantz with another man at a beach house the night of Rosenkrantz’s graduation from Calabasas High School.

Six shots struck Redman in the head, two in the torso, two in the arm; he died on the spot.

Rosenkrantz fled Calabasas and remained a fugitive for nearly a month before being apprehended. In 1986, he was convicted of second-degree murder with a firearm, and sentenced to 17 years to life in prison.

In the 14 years since, Rosenkrantz has been a model prisoner at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. He has never been disciplined. He has worked full-time as an administrative clerk at the prison. He has completed his bachelor’s degree and learned computer programming. Prison psychiatrists have described his potential for future violence as “well below average.”

All of these points have come up in a series of parole hearings held by the California Board of Prison Terms. Support for early parole has come from an impressive array of sources, including a deputy sheriff who investigated the case and an assemblywoman who argues that Rosenkrantz was the victim of a hate crime--the outing by Redman--and a violent confrontation that led up to it.

Rosenkrantz himself has expressed great remorse. Redman “did a bad thing,” he said at one hearing. “I did a much worse thing. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

It was in this atmosphere that Diane Vezzani stood before the parole board on June 18, 1996. Vezzani is the deputy district attorney whose job is to represent Garcetti at parole hearings for inmates sentenced to life terms. She is authorized to determine whether an inmate deserves parole, and to testify accordingly.

Almost without exception, she opposes parole.

This time, she didn’t--or so it would seem.

“On behalf of L.A. County, we would not be opposed to this man receiving a parole date,” she told the board. “I think he’s earned it.”

Interpretation of Remarks Differs

If she had stopped there, there might be no dispute today. But she continued: “The question is, how much time should he do for this horrible, horrible crime?. . . . I would leave, obviously, the time up to the panel.”

To Garcetti, it is clear that Vezzani had not opposed parole. He said he trusted her to make parole decisions, and did not keep track of her day-to-day work.

In this case, he added, “Had I made the original decision, I would not have taken the position Diane did.”

In an interview, Vezzani agreed that she took her position in 1996 without any orders from Garcetti or his top aides. But she said she didn’t take the position Garcetti says she did. The important part of her remarks, she said, was the second part, in which she spoke about how much time Rosenkrantz should serve. What she was trying to get across, she said, was that Rosenkrantz had done everything he could to qualify for parole, and deserved it--but not yet.

“The board knew what I was talking about,” she said.

That may be. But others have interpreted her remarks as Garcetti has.

“She’s saying she’s not opposed to parole,” said Richard Jenkins, who became Vezzani’s supervisor shortly after the 1996 parole hearing and has since retired.

The next year, as Rosenkrantz’s annual parole hearing neared, his lawyer, Alan Friedman, asked for a meeting with Garcetti. Friedman and Garcetti were old friends, and Friedman had been a campaign contributor of Garcetti’s.

In fact, he had given Garcetti $500 just five days before the 1996 parole board hearing. Rosenkrantz, it should be noted, is himself the son of a prominent attorney.

Garcetti agreed to the meeting, which was held Aug. 4, 1997, in an 18th-floor conference room in the district attorney’s office. Jenkins was among those who attended, but neither Vezzani nor the actual prosecutor in the case, Larry Diamond, was invited.

According to Jenkins and Garcetti, Friedman asked the district attorney to support parole for his client. Garcetti said no, that the office would not actively oppose parole, but it wouldn’t support it.

Vezzani was furious. She said she learned of the meeting, and of Garcetti’s decision, first from Friedman, then from Jenkins. In a scathing memo, she wrote: “How insulting to hear from the inmate’s attorney that the administration had a meeting on one of your cases without your presence or input!”

At the parole board hearing a few days later, Vezzani mentioned the meeting, and the fact that she wasn’t invited. Then she told the board that “the district attorney himself is not opposed to this man receiving a parole date.”

Commissioner Thomas Giaquinto expressed some surprise, asking Vezzani to confirm that Garcetti “took a position after all.” Told that was the case, he mused, “Hmm, that’s unusual.”

The meeting with Friedman is the one that Cooley cites as proof that Garcetti made the decision not to oppose parole for Rosenkrantz.

“I will suggest right now, and I will level this charge . . . that you had a secret meeting with Alan Friedman,” Cooley told Garcetti at a debate in July.

“You also got a campaign contribution [from Friedman] that same week. You excluded Diane Vezzani from that meeting, which was extraordinary. You did not include Larry Diamond, the trial lawyer, which was extraordinary. And then you personally . . . ordered someone to say that our position shall be that we will not oppose parole. And you only recently flip-flopped, because Diane Vezzani and Larry Diamond and a candidate like me and others stood up and said, ‘Enough is enough, let’s get the truth out there.’ ”

But the truth is that Garcetti didn’t receive a contribution from Friedman the week of that meeting in 1997. He did receive a contribution months later, in October of that year. Cooley has since acknowledged that he might have been confused about the dates.

There is a larger issue: Did Garcetti’s receipt of repeated contributions from Friedman over a period of years create at least an appearance of impropriety? Garcetti insisted they didn’t.

“I don’t see any connection,” he said. “I mean, he didn’t get what he wanted from me.”

Friedman declined to discuss the case, except to say that the meeting he had with Garcetti in 1997 “was entirely ethical and moral.”

Cooley is correct in saying that Garcetti’s office reversed itself earlier this year, after Cooley and others attacked the incumbent for being soft on Rosenkrantz. Just days before a June 30 parole board hearing, Diamond--who had tried the case and had always opposed parole--was told that he would testify that Garcetti now opposed parole.

Parole Board Under Scrutiny

By the time of that hearing, the parole board was acting under duress, having been ordered by a Superior Court judge to grant Rosenkrantz a parole date unless new and damaging information was brought to light. Gov. Davis, who says murderers should never be given early release, fought that ruling all the way to the state Supreme Court--and lost.

The parole board agreed to release Rosenkrantz. Ordinarily, Davis has the authority to overrule the parole board. But if he does this time, it could create a constitutional conflict between the governor and the courts.

For Diamond, the parole board hearing was an opportunity to finally correct what he believed were factual errors that had crept into the Rosenkrantz case and, he thought, contributed to a rising sense of sympathy for the convict.

At the hearing, however, he was prohibited from introducing new evidence that hadn’t been submitted 10 days in advance.

Ten days earlier, he still hadn’t been told which position he would be taking. Diamond is angry about the last-minute notice, and about the way the case has been handled through the years.

“I don’t think it’s that bad that people thought he ought to get parole,” he said. “It’s the way it’s been done.”

Top Garcetti aides Bill Hodgman and Sally Thomas were responsible for reversing the office’s position. They said they were tied up with other matters--including the Rampart police scandal--and made the Rosenkrantz decision as soon as they could.

Their reversal, however, raises other questions: Why did they do it? Were they under political pressure? Why didn’t the office oppose parole in 1997, when Garcetti and other top aides met with Friedman and considered the case?

Hodgman said he and Thomas proposed changing the office’s position simply because “it was the right thing to do.”

He was aware of political pressure from both sides--for and against parole--and tried to ignore it, Hodgman said.

As for why the district attorney hadn’t opposed parole three years earlier, he said, it appeared that Vezzani “didn’t have all the facts.”

Garcetti said he was relying on Vezzani’s previous decision and didn’t feel it was “necessary or appropriate to overrule her.”

Ultimately, though, that is precisely what he did.

As for Cooley, he might have been wrong in his accusations about Rosenkrantz, but he isn’t letting up entirely.

“The bottom line,” he insisted, “is, once our office found out about this case and the situation, why didn’t Garcetti and other higher-ups say, ‘Why don’t we absolutely oppose parole?’ Just say no.”

After all, he said, unable to suppress a small chuckle, “He is the Uzi killer of Calabasas.”